Elevator systems often include a number of elevator cars that are assigned to pick up passengers in a coordinated fashion, thereby increasing the number of people that may be served. Typically, a passenger makes a hall call by depressing an up or a down button at the elevator waiting area. The elevator system assigns an available elevator to stop at that floor.
Early designs suffered from having rudimentary car assignment protocols that did not adjust to peak usage times. For example, during a “peak up” period, such as at the beginning of the workday, many people wish to use the elevator system from the ground floor. There is the reverse situation during a “peak down” period. The elevator system was not responsive to the number of passengers waiting at any given floor nor to their desired destination. Consequently, passengers tended to crowd onto the first available car, which then had to stop at numerous floors. The next available car would then be less crowded, but may very well have to stop at some of the very same floors as the first car.
Recently, elevator systems have incorporated hall calls that invite passengers to select a desired destination before entering an elevator call. With this information, the elevator control system may make destination pre-assignments that better utilize the available elevator cars. For example, the number of passengers and stops may be more evenly divided between cars. Inefficiencies are avoided such as two cars taking passengers between the same two floors.
These known elevator destination protocols accepted a keypad input or a selected floor button input from the ground floor elevator waiting area. The elevator control system then assigned an elevator car based on proximity, passenger call wait time, availability and what other floors were already assigned to this and other cars. The passenger was then directed to the proper car, typically by a display by each respective elevator door listing the assigned destinations for that car.
While these elevator systems that incorporate the known elevator destination protocol have been an advance over the more rudimentary assignment approaches, often passengers find these elevator systems inconvenient. Given the paradigm shift in how to use an elevator, many people fail to see the need for each rider to make a hall call for the desired destination. Instead, seeing that others have already made a hall call, some passengers at the elevator waiting area do not input their desired destination, choosing instead to enter the first available car. Alternatively, the passenger may select the wrong destination at the hall call or enter the wrong car. These known elevator systems are not flexible enough for passengers that prefer to operate the elevator in the traditional manner.
These mistakes are made more prevalent by some destination protocols that only accept destination requests at the ground floor for peak up period optimization. Another reason for such mistakes is that such elevator systems tend to have simplistic displays of a list of car assignments, which a passenger may misunderstand as a hall call rather than a destination.
These known elevator destination protocols are often constrained by the physical accessibility to the various elevator cars from the waiting area. Having not all of the elevators serve the same set of floors introduces difficulty, such as when one elevator serves fewer floors than the rest. Without knowledge of the passenger's desired destination, this car with limited service may be inadvertently dispatched to pickup the passenger. To address this problem, often an extra set of hall call buttons are added for each set of elevator cars that serve the same subset of floors, relying upon the passengers to read signage directing them to the appropriate bank of elevators.
Even with knowledge of passenger desired destination, other problems exist with elevators servicing different subsets of floors or being physically spaced apart from other elevators. Specifically, the known destination car assignment approaches communicate the car assignment in a nonintuitive fashion. A passenger may thus miss the assigned car by overlooking the car assignment. For instance, the car assignment may be displayed by an elevator that is not within view of the passenger.
Consequently, a significant need exists for an elevator destination control that enhances passenger interaction, both by being flexible in accepting a desired destination and by communicating car assignments in a more intuitive manner.